Right: Early Medieval Sculpture from Forteviot Churchyard,
The new find is unique in Britain. Excavations at Forteviot, near Perth, have yielded the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler buried on a bed of white quartz pebbles and birch bark with at least a dozen personal possessions – including a bronze and gold dagger, a bronze knife, a wooden bowl and a leather bag.

Forteviot occupies a special place in the history of Scotland, being located at the geographical and historical heart of Scotland. The death of King Kenneth mac Alpin, one of the first kings of a united Scotland, was recorded at the ‘palace’ of Forteviot in AD 858 and at this time it is clear that this site was the most important royal centre in a fledgling Scottish nation.

Forteviot is also the location of the largest and most extensive concentration of prehistoric ritual monuments in mainland Scotland. It is these two widely separated but physically linked episodes of landscape use at Forteviot that has drawn the founders of SERF to explore what it is about Forteviot and the wider Strathearn region that created this regional centre in such different social and political situations.